Global Ganja Report

Colombia’s National Police announced the seizure of three tons of marijuana in the southwest of the country on July 28. Units of the traffic and transport police discovered the packets of herb in a truck that was stopped at a checkpoint on a road between the towns of Villarrica and Candelaria, respectively in the departments of Cauca and Valle del Cauca. The bust took place on the same route where police this year have carried out operations resulting in major seizures. When inspecting the vehicle the police discovered 47 packages of plastic fiber, all containing marijuana with a total weight of three tons.

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox last week presided over an international conference in his home state of Guanajuato, hosted by his private think-tank Centro Fox and dubbed the US-Mexico Symposium on Legalization and Medical Use of Cannabis. Joining Fox at the confab were ex-Microsoft executive James Shively, who plans to create the first US national marijuana brand, as well as a wide range of activists and academics that included former Mexican health minister Julio Frenk. Asked by Reuters whether Mexico could legalize cannabis by the time current president Enrique Peña Nieto's term ends in 2018, Fox said: "I think it's going to happen much sooner. Once California gets into this, Mexico is going to be obligated to speed up its decision process." (Reuters, July 24; Correo, Guanajuato, Latino Daily News, July 21; Reuters, El Universal, July 20)

Evidence of Trayvon Martin's marijuana use was allowed by the judge, but not submitted in the George Zimmerman murder trial, which wrapped up this week in Florida with a not guilty verdict. As a result, when the defense rested its case on July 11, jurors did not hear about the trace amounts of THC that were uncovered in Martin’s autopsy. The limited value of the evidence likely played a part in the defense team's decision. The THC level (around 1.5 nanograms, according to the medical examiner) almost certainly indicates that any marijuana use by Martin didn't take place on the evening that he was shot by Zimmerman and probably wasn’t even recent.

The herbal stimulant khat is to be banned by the British government—against the advice of its own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. In January the ACMD said khat should remain a legal substance, finding "insufficient evidence" it caused health problems. But Home Secretary Theresa May announced her decision to ban it last week, saying the risks posed could have been underestimated. Khat will be treated as a class C drug, along with anabolic steroids and ketamine. The Home Office said the ban was intended to "protect vulnerable members of our communities." 

Over the past generation, an informal alliance of activists, cultivators, entrepreneurs and medical professionals has struggled to redefine how the United States views the cannabis plant. Victories at state and municipal levels have created a new field of medicinal treatment for a wide variety of ailments in California and other mostly western states. Medical marijuana marks the starkest point in the divide between an industrial model of healthcare and a millennia-long tradition of herbal self-treatment—because nowhere else has the federal government been so intransigent.

Last week, both houses of the New Hampshire legislature voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill permitting doctors to prescribe medical marijuana to many patients with chronic or terminal illnesses. Gov. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said she would sign the bill. The New Hampshire bill is somewhat less permissive than medical marijuana laws in many other states, with compromise language that denies patients the right to grow cannabis at home, or to use it for post-traumatic stress disorder. The bill also includes restrictions aimed at ensuring that patients do not engage in "doctor shopping" in order to obtain a cannabis prescription. Doctors may only prescribe to those who have been their patients for at least 90 days, and who have already tried other treatments. (Think Progress, June 28)

Dutch prosecutors are seeking up to one-month suspended prison terms for owners and staff of cannabis cafes in Maastricht for selling pot to foreigners in defiance of the new law. But meanwhile the Netherlands government was ordered to pay damages to owners of cannabis cafes after a court in The Hague said new measures turning the coffee-houses into members-only clubs were too harsh. The amount the state must pay is still to be determined. (The Age, June 13; BBC News, June 5)

Raw Story reported May 12 that researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have successfully used a vaccine to produce a long-lasting anti-cocaine immunity in non-human primates. "The vaccine eats up the cocaine in the blood like a little Pac-man before it can reach the brain," the study’s lead investigator, Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, said in a press release. "We believe this strategy is a win-win for those individuals, among the estimated 1.4 million cocaine users in the United States, who are committed to breaking their addiction to the drug. Even if a person who receives the anti-cocaine vaccine falls off the wagon, cocaine will have no effect." Human clinical trials for the vaccine are expected soon.